Hello. I have searched this long and hard before posting, so please bear with me on this

I'm formatting my manuscript for Kindle, with an aim to release within the next few months...

One of the issues I'm facing is using both indents to mark new paragraphs, as well as lines between them in some contexts.
In case you want to say "this can't be done"... several of my favorite novels do exactly this (Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Neuromancer, Cloud Atlas) and it works extremely well for what they are going with in all three cases.

And yes, I've check the kindle versions of these books. All retain their hybrid indent + line space format for the paragraphs that require it.

So what I am interested in is, any help about how this is best done.
So far, setting the "stand alone" mini paragraph to 18point spacing on before and after in MSWord gets the look I need across most devices.

Is there a better way of doing it than this?

Currently I am thinking of converting MSWord to Scrivener then compiling through that program.
But I'm also open to suggestions on whether there's a better way than doing this too.

If you're going to do more than basic formatting, it would be a good idea to hire a professional. That's exactly how the books you seem to admire so much were produced. Bear in mind that one of the goals of converting a Word document for Kindle is to strip out fonts and formatting that won't work across all Kindle devices unless properly coded.

What I would do is run that Word doc through Word2CleanHtml dot com online, open the resulting html file in Sigil, and tweak it there as needed. Takes some learning, but easiest in the long term. You can get the latest version at https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil/releases.

What you are proposing (an irritating feature of this forum is that now I'm replying to your second post, I can't see the first!) does not sound to me like handsome bookmaking. Block paragraphs are seldom used outside of kids' books and very technical stuff, and if you do use a block paragraph, it normally doesn't take an indent.

I recognise block paragraphs is no good. This is not what I am doing however!!
I was more refering to hybrid indent and paragraph spaces, ala Terry Pratchett , William Gibson and Phillip K Dick.

For reference, my original post

I'm formatting my manuscript for Kindle, with an aim to release within the next few months...

One of the issues I'm facing is using both indents to mark new paragraphs, as well as lines between them in some contexts.In case you want to say "this can't be done"... several of my favorite novels do exactly this (Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Neuromancer, Cloud Atlas) and it works extremely well for what they are going with in all three cases.

And yes, I've check the kindle versions of these books. All retain their hybrid indent + line space format for the paragraphs that require it.

So what I am interested in is, any help about how this is best done.+So far, setting the "stand alone" mini paragraph to 18point spacing on before and after in MSWord gets the look I need across most devices.

So what I am interested in is, any help about how this is best done.+So far, setting the "stand alone" mini paragraph to 18point spacing on before and after in MSWord gets the look I need across most devices.

One of the issues I'm facing is using both indents to mark new paragraphs, as well as lines between them in some contexts.
In case you want to say "this can't be done"... several of my favorite novels do exactly this (Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Neuromancer, Cloud Atlas) and it works extremely well for what they are going with in all three cases.

When I look at two of the Discworld ebooks, I don't see that at all. Except that they are ragged right, at least on the Look Inside, they are well and conventionally formatted, with indented paragraphs and no extra space between paras. As I've said before, that is how books should be formatted. And that is Amazon's default for Kindle.

Ok.... I've been checking using the "Look inside" feature as I don't have a kindle on me (arrives tomorrow, fingers crossed)
I didn't expect that would deviate the formatting from the way the ebook displays it however...

I'll have to get back to you once I've had a chance to research this matter further.
Thanks for all the help though. I've now resolved to build the whole thing in HTML. Keep it simple

First I would highly recommend Scrivener for producing an epub because it usually converts your scriv doc to epub flawlessly. Another major tip for using Scrivener -- Never use the pre-compiler Formattng options in Scrivener -- you should switch it off. Just format your doc As Is -- as you see it in the Scrivener editor -- so what you see in the scriv editor is exactly what you will get in the epub. Please do not fall into the painful trap of believing all those fancy videos on Scrivener usage. The precompiler Formatting options are really not needed.

Your requirement to both indent and set spacing between paragraphs of 18pt is very easily done in both Word and Scrivener.

To do this properly in Word you would have to create and use a single paragraph style for all story text paragraphs in your doc. Here it is -- how to format all your story text by creating just one paragraph style -- step by step in Word 2007(more recent Word versions will be similar):

*Click on the Home menu tab and then, on the right, click on the tiny x-button at bottom right in the Change Styles panel.

*In the new Styles dialog window, click on the New Style button at the bottom of the window.

*In the new dialog, fill in the all necessary details -- and name your new style -- in this first section then click on Format > Paragraph > Indents and Spacing.

*In the Indentation section you can set your own paragraph indent in the Special and By section.

*To appropriately set the spacing between paragraphs that you require, go to the Spacing section and just set Space After to 18pt.

*Save everything

You now have one paragraph style in Word that you can apply and use for all your story text.

A bit off topic, but it seems to me that for many "amateurs" who play around with formatting, that's part of the experience of doing an ebook. I have spent hours in that very frustrating endeavor, and I have learned a lot. One thing I have learned is that Scrivener is just too complicated for normal mortals, so, yes, I DO call upon professional help to make my e-books. Cheers.

Not off topic at all! A hallmark of the amateur is that he thinks his notice of book design is superior to that of Alfred A. Knopf. Poets are the worst in this respect, as any professional formatter will tell you. (Many simply refuse to format poetry.) It is not at all difficult to make a professional-looking ebook, but it does mandate that you actually know what a professional-looking ebook looks like!

(The same goes in spades for print. Do a search for books published through KDP Print ("independently published") and you will see how awful a book can look. I do this regularly, and so far I have seen exactly one that I would ever consider buying, on the basis of its appearance alone. We don't know what we don't know. )